God is {FRIEND}

This is part my blogging series "Challenge Filled February"
I'll be blogging every day about who God is
To start from the beginning click HERE

9As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. 12"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

John 15:9-17

I've read this passage over and over again - even meditated on it the summer I worked at camp because verse 13 was our theme verse
And please don't take this next statement the wrong way because I try to really value what my God did for me by giving up his Son to the painful death of a cross -
but even more valuable than verse 13 to me is

verse 15

That God lets me in on the plan. 

Jesus did not try to hide why he was there on earth. He told the disciples daily what the plan was. Sure, sometimes it was through cryptic stories, but others he outright told the bold harsh truth:

I must suffer

I love that daily, He is speaking to me and telling me, as a friend, what he has planned.
Some days I'm not looking or listening, but that does not mean that God is speaking any less.

We start each work day in a time of worship together as a staff. Over the past two months we've been reading through the Psalms and then talking about ways we've seen God. Honestly, it's been a little tough lately. But I keep going, and I keep listening to my co-workers speak of the ways God is letting them in on His plan.

So to finish this out for tonight I'm just gonna use some words penned by one of my new favorite blog finds

Because beneath frustration and imperfection I believe in the goodness of our moments and our lives, especially the kind that take some fighting for.

How are you hearing from God today?